


All Matter, Aching

by Brighid



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M, post-Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 07:44:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody leaves us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Matter, Aching

**Author's Note:**

> Written for all children learning to face the mortality of their parents.

All Matter, Aching

by Brighid

Clark is shivering when he reaches his loft, and its an odd sensation, because he's not cold, he's just ... chilled. The floor is hard beneath his feet, the stairs steep. It is not his grief, it is not his sorrow, but somehow it has found its way into him, gnawed a hole inside of him. He's hollowed out, full of echoes. 

He licks the rainwater from his lip and it seems to taste of tears.

"Your mother said I could wait for you here," and Clark jerks his head up, sees Lex standing by the window in a black raincoat that falls about him like crows wings. Lex's lips curve slightly in greeting, but his eyes are flat and silvered as mirrors. 

It's all reflections, echoes, none of it quite real, yet more real than anything Clark's known for a very long time. For an impossibly long time they simply stand in silence, listening to the rain. 

"Your mother died," Clark says suddenly, artlessly. "Whitney's father's dead."

Lex cocks his head slightly, and the mirror cracks just a little. "People do that. Die. Leave."

The shivers grow stronger,roll through Clark in waves as the hollow in his gut is replaced by a sudden, aching knot. Anticipatory grief. He remembers a fleeting image of himself in a field of graves under a sky as dark as rusted pennies, the colour of old blood. Alone.

Just ... alone.

He looks up suddenly, throat tight, to catch a fleeting, naked yearning in Lex's expression, something both lonely and wistful in the shimmer of his gaze. It's only there a moment before they slide silver again, cracked and fissured but still a reflection of what the world might reasonably expect to see. Lex smiles at him, but it is tight and thinned, a knife's blade parody of humour.

"It _sucks_ ," says Clark, and the word is bitter, dark and far more vicious than it should be.

Lex makes a noise somewhere between exhalation and laughter, runs his hand over his head. "I'll give you that, Clark. But it's also inevitable." He shifts, paces a little, restless movement that has no channel -- no foil, no cue, no coffee cup to misdirect the audience. "Look, I'm not exactly sure why I even came over, I just thought ... hell if I know what I thought. Just ... I'm sorry." 

He makes as if to move, to pass by Clark, but Clark stretches out his hand and holds him in place with a gentle pressure that is unrelenting. "Lex," he says, little more than a whisper, "don't leave. Just don't leave." The rain makes everything smell like wet earth, like newly dug graves, and he can almost taste blood in the air. 

It almost tastes of tears.

Lex's hand comes up, covers his with cold, slim fingers. "Everybody leaves, Clark," he says again, but with far less certainty than before.

"Don't leave," and it hurts his throat, it's almost impossible to get past the ache, but he has to say it. Not saying it would cost so much more. He shifts his hand, brings the other one up so that Lex's hand is held tight and then pulls it against his own chest, agaist the slick of his wet suit and the pounding of his heart.

Lex's silver gaze shifts, goes grey like clouds and bright like rain and he swallows. "Okay, Clark. I won't."

"Good," and it's simple as that. For now, it is just as simple as that.

)0(

 

I am He that Aches with Love

I AM he that aches with amorous love;   
Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?   
So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know. 

Walt Whitman 

Comments welcome, but again, mostly stream of consciousness with very little editing.

B


End file.
